 Okay, what I wanted to just start with first is, as we're a committee, we are looking at our S40, our lead bill, and I'm trying to get us to help us to get a little bit more focused on where the decisions are that we as the legislature need to make. I've outlined what I can see as the primary questions that we need to answer. We don't have to have a discussion about that yet because we've got people in the district right now. But the first one is cost, who's going to pay and how much is it, and who's going to pay. The second is the timeline, what are we looking at in terms of where we get started and what we're through. The third is the action level, what action level are they set. And the fourth is who is going to be included, child care, what help deeply do with going to child care facilities. So that's where I'm trying to see if we can address those decision points. If you think of other ones, we can share that later. But the moment when I want to get us focused on is really a better understanding of the joint fiscal note that we got and to clarify the accuracy of that in terms of hearing from people from the field. So actually, probably what might help is to have some of that fiscal note up. Caleb, could you get that fiscal note up so we can take a look at that. Or we don't hear. She's going to get the paper. So we have today, so this is Lyle and Bruce, correct? Correct. Okay. So for the record, why don't you introduce yourself so that we can connect your voice with what we're going to hear. And if you haven't been looking at the statements, you're more than interested. Okay. I'm Bruce McIntyre, director of facilities for Addison Central School District. So I've read through the Senate bill and definitely have an opinion. Great. But I'd like to just answer your questions if that's possible. Okay. And Lyle? Lyle Smith, Williston School District is also here just to answer your questions. So I guess my first question is, one question that I would have for you is who in your school would be, in your district, would be capable of making some of the remediation that would be required? Are there different levels and qualities of staff? Are there requirements in your communities for, you know, who can start taking plumbing apart? Sure example. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Just for everybody's context, Bruce is the facilities director at Addison Central which has gone through this process. I've already done the testing. I've been doing remediation. Correct. So it's a real experience as opposed to potentially. So we do have a staff member who can change faucets, changing a faucet without, you know, moving its location or changing anything about it really. It's considered maintenance so you can have, in-house staff do that. You know, out of the roughly, you know, 26 employees that are in the facilities department in the district, they're really only myself and one other person who has the skill to do that. And you have another maintenance worker who will do some plumbing type work. But as far as it changing out a fixture or changing out a water fountain, it's really the two of us and I would say the majority of the time I end up hiring a licensed profession to do the work. Yeah, it's similar in my school district. There are probably one other employee and myself and often that employee will get in over his head and have to call me. I've got a ton of other things to do. So if it's a really big project, we typically wait until a school break and have to plan these things out far in advance. Part of the reason we have to plan these things out far in advance is because if you go to shut a unit off and the old mount does not hold, then you've got a much bigger project than you originally started. And I think that's part of my concern for this is some of the older schools are going to find a lot of project creep and they're going to get into a lot more than they realize trying to chase that kit that they got in their test. So you've done all of your schools? We haven't remediated all of our schools. We've tested all of our schools. And you haven't changed faucets? We're in the process of changing faucets. Have you tested any of those that you've changed? We have tested a few that we have changed. And the results? And the results were better. We're better. So we had three months after remediation that we waited to test because when you go and disturb something to stir up the... Was the testing that was performed, what was the level of parts per billion? So it ranged quite a bit. So first draw we ranged from one part per billion up to 278 parts per billion. And that happened to come from a shower in a middle school locker room that they don't use. And that's part of the issue is it was kind of been used in New York. The other faucets, if I may? The other faucets? The other faucets. We had about a third that were above the 15 parts per billion on first draw. Thank you. Ken? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Please join us. We are just in the process of asking people in the field who are trying to get a better idea of what this bill means in the field. Caleb? In the remediation, I don't know how much you've done so far, but we were having a discussion the other day about permitting that would go along with some of these changes. Sounds like a lot of the fixed replacement would be maintenance and I'm guessing therefore might not require a permit, but I'm wondering at what point you would anticipate that you would be getting filling permits or fire safety permits or anything like that. Plumbing permits would be what's applicable and we do that for drinking fountains. A lot of the old fountains aren't at the right height for ADA. So if we're going to replace the fountain, we'll put it back at the right height for ADA. That requires actually just moving the plumbing and that requires a permit or a license professional to do it. Do you have a cost estimate for what that permitting obligation makes for them? I believe it's just the permit itself. Permit's not the cost. It's the cost, the unit that you're replacing it with. The unit and the professional to come in and do it. You're probably talking about $1,000 for the, it's called an LK is what most people use, a bottle filling station slash drinking fountain. That gives you a filtered stainless steel drinking fountain that has a counter on there that tells you how many gallons you put in the filter when it's time to change the filter. So by the time you spent the $1,000 and probably I'm guessing $600 maybe for a plumber to come in. No major issues with all the valves that are ahead of that unit. So it can be costly, but a lot of schools have started to phase out the old water fountains anyway. So it's something that we've all been working towards typically. If you have a budget at all, some of the smaller schools maybe not, but most high schools and middle schools, bigger ones have been doing this for quite some time. Can you scroll that up a little bit, the iPad? How far are you on it? I want to go up to where we're looking at over here. The cost per unit, where they looked at. That was back on some page. What's that? Go back one more. Go back up here? No. It was on the page that you were on wasn't it? Right there, it's coming up for TAP. TAP remediation cost estimate. Okay, there was something else that had a number of schools. There you go. There it is. Right there. Can everyone see that? Can you only go a little more? So help us go a little bit deeper into what this says. So this is looking at, it should be on the iPad. Maybe you can show them the iPad so they can see it and turn around. There you go. You're looking at 400. Lyle, you have a pretty big school there. How many TAPs? Sorry. You know, I tried to quickly, you know, it's way more than that. I remember just counting the water fountains and it was a ridiculous number. Because if you think of, in our school in particular, every classroom, when we walked through, had a sink and some of them had a sink and a bubbler. We have bathrooms and hallways, little onesie, you know, stalled bathrooms. We have bathrooms with multiples. We've got the kitchen. We've got hose bibs that I worry about with coaches filling up Gatorade buckets. Custodial closets, I think probably don't make sense to do. I mean, but we even went in the art room and the art room teacher indicated that yes, in fact some kids will bring from there, which was a little surprising. But I guess they do. We really put a number to the amount in 145,000 square foot school. It's huge. And when we did our renovation, which was almost $20 million worth of renovation, we opted to change all the fixtures and all the faucets, but did not change all the copper in the building because it was too expensive and had to take it out of the budget. Which means that we still have, you know, solder in there and those pipes. The level of parts for a billion worries us because even though we've changed our faucets and the end use, the piping getting to it is still the original. That's been a concern of mine. Right from the beginning is the supply, the source. I'd like to add a couple things if you guys don't mind. Please do. And for the record, give me the surname. My name is Ken Sullivan. And you're from? I'm from the Addison Northwest School. I also am a licensed plumber, probably one of the only ones in the state that directs buildings, grounds and safety. I've been doing this for about 30 years. I got a couple of concerns here, points in regards to consumption and how and causes that get us to this point where we have high-level levels, especially in children. Homes I think is probably generally where we're getting most of it. I think everybody can agree you send your kid to school with a full water bottle, not an empty one. And that very well could be a contributor to this. A couple of other things that throw me a little bit in procedure with the health department in taking samples would be if we are going in there and taking a sample in the morning before anybody does anything. And there's 400 faucets that we're going to sample. We're going to take the first sample. That's going to have lead in it, we presume. And then we are going to flush, if I'm not mistaken. We're going to do a flush sample. By the time we get down the line, we have now flushed water from the main town, likely, through everything. So as we go, the lead will diminish throughout the procedure. So we're not really getting a good level of lead throughout. So just to cut through all of it, I would say the best thing to do to get a measuring stick for this state would be to send a sample kit to every home and every building in the entire state. One bottle that you take on Monday morning, at least six hours, it's been, you know, the pipes have been sitting for six hours. And you sample what comes out of there after everything's been sitting in every single building. That's going to give you a premium measuring stick of where the state sits in consumption. If you really wanted to just put it to kids, it's families that have children. You could look at housing developments that were built pre-2012 in Vermont when the lead laws came in or in 1991 with the safe drinking water and lead and copper rules that came into place. But in the early 80s, that's when the highest lead was happening in housing developments. So we have housing developments out there that are probably really high in lead content when drinking from the fountain. Those are a couple of things, but you're also not, I don't think we're addressing a few other things. Risks in schools, particularly, could come from the pH of the water or the source, as somebody might have said, could come from electrical grounding when electricians go in over the years and they ground electrical to piping, it can cause the pH electrolysis action inside corrosion to happen. I think we've all maybe heard of that, water heaters failing because of improper grounds and those kinds of things. Those types of things can create a higher lead level because it's basically corroding the inside of the plumbing. You also have the source of the water which most municipalities actually put oral phosphates in water which coat the inside of the plumbing pipes from the source to the spout. That is, I would say, most municipalities, I'm not sure what the regulations are on private wells and those types of things. I think that's another discussion, but that's where I would stand with some of that. Some of the other risks that you have are velocities of pipes, old plumbing, lead solder. If we're taking a sample like I said in every faucet, we're not taking a sample from the worst, oldest plumbing in the crawl space where the lead and water, where the lead leaks into the water over the weekend, that's where we want to take a sample from. That's where the highest lead is. Because after you've done 50 fixtures, you're wasting your money at the health department and you're wasting your time testing for lead because it's flushed more or less. So considering all those variables and occupancy, the number one thing I thought about in all of this discussion is how come we're not talking about hot water? Every single kitchen I know of fills the pot to boil the noodles with hot water. It is proven, in fact, that hot water has higher levels of lead than any other faucet. The EPA has put it out to flush with cold water to rinse. It's right on their website and it's really easy to find that information. So we're not discussing hot water either, but we're talking about two samples on cold. When we're filling the pot to cook the noodles for the children with hot water, which I can surely guarantee is higher than the cold water. It's not as flushed as often. There's components in that system that are going to help reach the lead and contribute to the lead factor and this isn't something new. This dates back to the Clean Water Act, the federal government has put through. So I would say that there's a lot of things to think about in this other than just simply going around to taps and testing at the faucets. Yeah, to your point, I was talking to Tom Breuter from ATC and he said that there are still lots of, and I was surprised, lead pipes in municipal water systems that probably are safe because of the additives they put, the oral faucets. But they still exist in homes, in older homes, that connection to the main. And I know wells have foot valves and I know they've changed them from the old bronze and brass to stainless because they were lead and no, so lots of homes with wells likely have a possibility of it. So homes are probably the biggest contributor and there is nobody in the state of Vermont really policing this. So we're talking about adding more rules to something that there's already rules in place for, but we're not policing. We have one plumbing inspector and he cannot go around and check every faucet to ensure you didn't buy it off Amazon and it's loaded with lead. And it's impossible to get a hold of this without policing what we've already got in place. So we cut inspectors, we don't inspect, we allow residential owners to do whatever they want to, even wire their own homes. This is a contributor and it's been from decades of allowing that and I'm not big on over-governmentizing it, but if we want to control what's happening, we have to see it. And I think that's a big contributor to lead over the years. And to add to the point, there is plenty of lead in pipes. There's asbestos line pipes out there. Did anybody know that they're probably at home have that? And they use oral phosphates to mitigate that and mitigate the leaching of all metals, potentially iron bacteria or asbestos piping leaching into the water or lead leaching into the water. That's a mitigation process that we already do and we are aware of. And most of the problems are not the source, they are the piping, an old-aged piping, especially when they break. So in Montpelier, I understand there's been some water breaks. Every time you break it, it is going to disturb the oral phosphates. That is going to intensify the potential for lead in the water coming out. That is going to end up at the drinking fountain every single time as a little brown water at the school from that break. And this just happened to me yesterday, as a matter of fact, in the Virgin's Pantone area. And I sat with the Virgin's Pantone Water District this morning from 6 a.m. to 7.30 a.m. to ask them some questions and get a little knowledge of their point of view on this. And their point of view is that our source is good, for the most part. They can't speak for wells. Our practices are good. The lead levels are below the EPA's suggested amounts in CDC. We can do better, but it's going to be strategic in more of an investment grade audit to individual buildings than it is to just paint a broad brush across every school or building in the state. Investment grade audit to each building to find out the circumstantial issues that they each have, whether it's grounding, whether it's acidic pH in their water, whether it's 1954 copper and lead plumbing, or other factors that may contribute to the lead in water. Part of our job is going to be setting the quality of how we set the policy and then we can have the other smart fellows figure out that detail. We are looking at action levels. There's the EPA action level at 15 that has no correlation from what we understand to health. The health parts are saying that it should be nothing. We are looking at from you what it's going to take. How accurate are the numbers that are before us as we figure out how we're going to test and pay for the mediation? Who's responsible for paying for it? It's only the children. Most of us feel some responsibility for the children. And if we are to figure out what this is going to cost, we have to have some idea about what it's going to cost. I really do appreciate the complexity of the problem that you're talking about. Looking at where the problems can occur, there are sort of different levels of responsibility along the way, whether it's at the municipal level that's giving you water, that's problematic, or whether it's in the building or it's in the faucet or it's in the pipe. All of those will make a difference in terms of cost. And how deeply we vote. Can you give us an idea? This is the other paper that actually talked about the individual cost for fixtures, what they figure. I think they figure. I'm going to go over that one now. Looked at. Like tap replacement that's highlighted. $300 a tap. That's really going to be blown out of the water. Okay. Talk to us about that. Blown out of the water. Perfect example. Now is that including labor? No. They're assuming there's somebody on staff that can do it. Oh goodness. Not in Vermont. There's an assumption in this that the schools just need to get the fixtures and the school will be involved in the replacement. When it comes to the childcare providers, there's an assumption that they're going to need help. Everyone's going to need help. They are. I mean, technically, if you're on a municipal water system, you need a licensed plumber to take the faucet out. That's plumbing code. Vermont follows, which we don't police, but it's certainly a code. I'll tell you, most schools do not follow that rule. No, of course they don't. Nobody does. They can't afford to. No one does. And so when there's a huge flood because of it or something else happens and they cross-connect a heating pipe to a water pipe and someone gets deathly ill, then it goes back into the insurance world and that's what ends up happening. But we do have these laws and codes in place. We're just not, we're not looking at them. But you take a kitchen sink faucet. That sort of throws and skews this entire thing from a laboratory faucet because you're talking about a $1,200 faucet. You're talking about a good day job to remove a three bay sink with all the drains, unplug it from the wall, pull it away, get to the plumbing on the backside of that, replace that valve, put it back, hook it up and have it running. In a time window, that most people cannot even afford in schools because this is running all the time. So there's a time window that's either done at night or weekends or vacations, which usually costs more. So now add that to the labor and you're talking about a potential $2,000 faucet replacement on a kitchen three bay sink. Would you folks be willing to put together for us something that said, if you're doing the kitchen faucet, this is what it's going to look like. If you're doing a bathroom faucet, this is what it's going to look like. If you're putting in a bubbler, this is what it's going to look like. Something, if it's going to include all the fittings, what is this going to look like? If there's something that we could get, I won't hold you totally responsible for it, but I'm looking at it. What if that's not the cost would be my question. What if it's the piping underneath that comes to that faucet, which is more or less what's going to be? Not that this much distance, literally that the water passes through of the brass that it's touching, the wetted surface of that brass, but the 200 feet of wetted surface before it that is copper pipe with leaded solder. So now we've gone to do this except we haven't done anything about the actual problem. Just curious maybe then, because that cost is going to be incredibly high. And there's the percentage that that's the problem and then there's the percentage that it's just the faucets. So I'll take some questions here. He was before me. Okay, I'll go. So thank you three gentlemen for providing a practical perspective. You might get the most valuable testimony award. What codes and laws are we currently ignoring? Do you have any examples of the... Make sure the camera's not far. Ken, you're on the spot. I'm sorry, what is it? You said we're currently ignoring certain laws and codes. I'm not sure I said we're not policing them. So there's nobody inspecting the work that's being done. No one is inspecting all of the work that is being done. Does that answer your question? We do not have officials in the state of Vermont to inspect all of the work that's being done. If you look at Massachusetts, for example, they do, they even require a permit and inspector for a residential home. We do not have that. We have an inspector who does a region of more than three-quarters of the state. Representative Washington, just can a plumber designate someone as long as any of you to do that work? If you were under their supervision, do they have anything like that? Well, I'm not sure how to answer the question. The law is that a licensed plumber can have three apprentices, per se. I think in the school system, you're going to find that there just isn't that level of skill. The school that I know of that have actual master plumbers on staff or Essex High School has one. Burlington has a few, maybe a bigger school. That might even be it. But they can designate other people in the school who know plumbing that can say you can't do this. Technically, by code, no. Okay, no, I just want to know tech. But again, that's not enforced. And we can't afford to do that because we don't have skilled laborers coming out of any tech trade schools that were taken away almost 17 to 20 years ago. And we have a very big issue there. It's a good lot of finding somebody. I just wanted you were commenting on that as well. I didn't hear you. I'm not sure what... I just wanted to respond to the question as well. No, we just don't have... You're a master plumber in Essex High School and Burlington has a couple master plumbers, but as far as schools having on-staff plumbing... I'd actually like to add something to that. Just doesn't happen. They can't afford to hire them. The rate that they can make out in the private industry is not what you can afford to pay them in school. I think I'd like to add something to that if I could. One more thing. Excuse me one minute. I need a chair for our... That's good. We always like to have... I am passionate about this issue for many reasons. 17 years of business ownership is one of them. And I closed my plumbing business due to the lack of skilled laborers due to work. Period. So I don't even... At the school level we have less than what a company has to do the work and right now I don't even have a vendor that I trust to come and do the work that have skilled laborers to do it. So we could call New England Air, we could call Vermont Mechanical, we could call this and they may have a kid who's just got out of high school and had no formal experience show up on the door and they may have someone who's had a lot of experience show up on the door. But if you ask the business owners that own plumbing and heating businesses they're going to tell you the same thing. They don't have skilled people. Want to get to look at them in common? First of all, all you got to do is watch a YouTube video, right? For anything. That is what got us into this. So my question is you're concerned about the distilled water system within a building. Bruce, in the experience in Edison Central did any of the tests show that it was anything beyond the fixtures? Yeah, in the high school in particular we have a pizza kiosk is in the cafeteria we had put in a hand wash sink by code. We tapped off of an old fountain line that runs miles through the ceiling. So that came back, tested as high and then on the flush sample it came back as high as well. And the reason for that is because the piping to get to that doesn't go anywhere else. It just goes to that fountain and it's fairly long run in that hand wash sink. So it never really gets fully flushed. You'd have to flush it for five minutes to get a good second go on the sink. Let's have Lyle respond as well. Out of nine buildings and however many taps were tested you only found one that really showed evidence that it was anything beyond the fixture. Yeah, but I think as Lyle and kind of both stated once you start taking samples by the time you've done you've flushed the majority of the problem anyway. We've had some testing that we felt was in the piping or in a valve way downstream that we would have had to chase and the levels that this was quite some time ago were not as high and it was in a boiler room where nobody was going to drink. So we didn't chase that one down too far but again I think the nature of the sitting water in a line like that that doesn't get exercised it was probably the culprit. Again I talked to the guy that I go to for expert advice on stuff like this Tom Roto from ATC Associates that we've spoken about and he had done some projects that he referenced finding lead that was higher than they liked in the sampling and taking and replacing the faucets did in fact get them the results that they were looking for which was good news to me with a school that has older piping in it with old solder joints. I don't think that will always be the case I think you're going to find sometimes that it's not just the faucet that particular case study was a Chinese made faucet that probably had no business being in that college dormitory. I guess my gut is that we just don't know enough we don't have enough case studies of schools of different ages that have gone through the entire process to say this amount of money per square foot building that's constructed in this year is typically going to take care of that building's needs. We don't have enough information on going from start to finish to remediation to really put good numbers on what this true cost is going to be for Vermont schools and that scares the heck out of me. Do we know if imported fixtures have the same, they're checked for the same standard as the Americans? I highly doubt no. So we don't know. In a lot of the schools I think by their plumbing supplies a lot of them, not all of them from supply works which is a traveling sales guy that most of us know, Dan who is very good about making sure that we have the right parts and the right lead logs are followed. However, it's not cheap and that's where his numbers for the kitchen faucets are very expensive but they're all they need, the lead logs and that's why we buy them from him. You get into a mixing valve when you're talking about the hot water when's the last time you changed the big mixing valve? That's free mixing valve for a typical high school of 400 kids is about $6,000 without labor. Yeah, it's scarred numbers. And that is a hot water that's on the hot water which we're not talking about testing but it's required because it's an affordable water system. A lead-prison mixing valve is $6,000 instead why would we need that? So that's an anti-sculpt valve for tempering of water so that it protects everyone as the hot water fossil from being scalded. Representative Elder. If you wanted to identify which fixtures or faucets in the building were older than 2012 when you'd mentioned some of the lead-free laws coming into place would there be a reasonably efficient way to these inventory that was in a school? Can we answer that? There's no decode on them. There's symbols that have been that have been stamped on the valve and brass bodies but to my knowledge there's no standard symbol for this across the boards but certain manufacturers have and I believe the EPA I think I actually brought that there's a handful of symbols that are used for low lead or lead-free which I'll meet this standard of .025 .0 it's basically .2% lead. Right. And so record keeping within the school wouldn't be of help there in those cases? You think that I mean I could tell you in Allenbrook school every fossil there was 1996 that was the year of construction and nothing had been changed so anything that it was very easy in that case I could tell you when we went through the renovation in the other school it wouldn't be fairly easy too to look at the 1954 fixer and go that's original it's just easy to see the style and the design of them so I think you probably could take a pretty good educated guess as to what year it was based on the year of construction that looked like it was original equipment but you wouldn't know if it was lead-free well in 2012 but not necessarily because we just had a safe ship to us from Pennsylvania it comes with a faucet that was not lead-free that was this summer in August through a major distributor here Kittridge if you've never heard of Kittridge so Kittridge purchased the sink it comes from the manufacturer with a faucet if you're not policing it and the young plumber that's there is kind of just doing his job that gets hooked up boom it's in place and there's no way to tell at this point well if you I would just carry out why that's allowed under the National Safe Water Drinking Act that seems like it's in violation of the 2015 lead-free rise it's not it doesn't meet the same standard as Vermont and California use for low lead is my understanding but still it still does meet the drinking water act standard which was put in place in 86 right or 91 I think it was updated in 2014 to meet the Vermont Code so I think nationally where Vermont moved in 2009 that's what I had read sorry Jack so since you guys have the best idea of how much work this is going to take what are the logistics how long is it going to take to test every school in Vermont five years if you're relying on in-house staff it's it's going to and you're proposing on doing it only while schools in session and that's eight hours sitting down with an eight hour sit time yeah it's it will be difficult to get it done in a few years we're going to have to test off hours because you can't get a we have custodial staff that's there till 11 o'clock at night what's going on until probably 10 so if you want eight hours you're going to have to get up pretty early in the morning to do any reasonable number of samples that haven't been touched yet Monday morning Monday morning we did the majority of hours on Monday but again all this time this is going to be going on all at the same time the pressure is more on the lab but we're going to get all of this you're all going to be working at the same time we're all working at the same time you'll definitely swamp the lab I'm just wondering and I asked this question the other day and I don't know if a system is sampled let's say early morning let's say it gets a 15 action whatever the action is can you figure out let's say if it's flush and then it comes back at 2 or 3 how long before that tap would get back up to 15 how long does the water have to sit to get back to the pre-flying level they say a minimum of 6 hours so it could be 6 to 8 or longer I'm assuming I think it just depends on how much lead is in the area of the plumbing it's hard it is okay, thank you I am interested in if we could get a little bit better picture of what some of those fixtures would cost to be since we're talking about different kinds of fixtures sure but obviously can I think you could help us with that I really, that's a call to Dan Shaughnessy Dan Shaughnessy I think I gave you his number last time I spoke and that's a lot of the schools that buy their supplies from him because he specializes in schools and hospitals and he knows what you need and often we need odd little drinking fountain parts that you just don't buy at the hardware store and he knows that you can only use lead frame products well two things one I would just say that we did have testimony from the business manager where Bruce works that at 3 parts per billion action level we estimate the mediation compliant with S40 as written to a cost between 80 and $100,000 conservatively this assumes replacement of fixtures only but it's not improved plumbing and replacement costs of digital piping so I put that out there I could probably get you the number that it cost our school to replace all the faucets during the $20 million renovation that we just completed I would have to go to Thomas and say okay how many fixtures did we change what were the cost of those fixtures and that would give you a fixture and labor cost so the plumbing company did that renovation but I'm hearing perhaps an even bigger looming problem from you I just wanted to make sure I'm on the right track here that if we are including child care centers we're talking about 1,500 locations many of them big schools many of them small schools maybe just an in-home child care a broad range but what you're saying is I've sort of been thinking who's going to do all this and you're saying that the plumbers to do all this work don't exist and are we talking about lavatory faucets all of them in the men's and women's bathroom are we talking about as the bill is currently written potentially but we're not necessarily discussing the hot water side which is where the most lead is coming from in the current track that's interesting well most people don't turn on the hot water to drink everybody cooks with it so it's coming in the food and that's what the kids are eating since I've been in this room and learning I don't use hot water to cook plus your faucets too ahead of time plus your faucets that's probably the single thing that's beneficial thing that you can do is to flush the faucets you just did that for right now until we figure this out a lot of schools do I've heard that strategy especially after a long break a Christmas break or something like that the custodians will be instructed to go in early in the morning and let things run before kids get in just enter them would you like to represent a chair represent a contest would you like to join the committee from the appropriations committee and we'll be looking at them we've been hearing from these great people who are those directors and school systems are learning that it's possible that the current current estimates have been underfunded another issue that's come up money-wise is the need for perhaps additional manpower at the agency of education they're claiming that they're the best point people to coordinate with schools to sort of get the word out educate those who are going to be doing their work that the health department feels that what they do but in terms of coordinating and interfacing with schools at the AOE we really should have somebody that can handle that into things I'll give you a comment on that I'm just curious if you have a reaction to that I don't interface the AOE directly much I do hear from the business manager and the superintendent on occasion that they feel the AOE is sometimes difficult to get a hold of I haven't dealt with them since Kathy we don't have there's no facilities representation in the AOE at this point so each of the three of you are from different school districts correct and have you any clue as to how much has been budgeted so far for next years you still have work to do I'm assuming we have work to do I think I can speak pretty confidently that school districts statewide have not budgeted for this problem everybody carries or everybody should carry some funding to replace a water fountain or a sink but that's more to replace something that's damaged not necessarily looking for something that's still functioning to be replaced do you know that our licensed job care facilities are required to do water testing at the time of their licensing are there requirements that you're aware of at this point to do testing are you just no we began our testing really through Middlebury College they have an environmental science program that had the equipment and the desire to come test and the professor there tested every outlet in our district which was a great benefit to us because it showed us where we had some issues but prior to that two years ago I had never been asked to do any water testing not on the radar no, not on the radar and the schools that I I'm sorry other than I would say other than the schools who run wells and then they're required by the state to do the schools that I've run I have called back in the day Gary Galca and said hey I wanted to test a few random water fountains in my school just to get a snapshot of where I'm at and his response would always be that's a great idea but it wasn't anything I had to do it's become more of a standard practice for me to test water fountains and just because it makes good sense to me to do that but it wasn't anything I was aware that it was a requirement that I do a certain amount of them or anything so would you agree it should be the policy of the state that we are testing water in school regardless of the different features that we get there would you all agree that this is something that we should be required to do I mean in the end yeah I mean it's the best thing to do for the kids is to get to as low a number as feasible of the infrastructure you have to work with and if the infrastructure you have to work with is in really poor condition and not giving good numbers and trying to come up with some capital plans and find some money to start working towards making it better but this depending on where that number that you pick the action level it makes us very nervous about how we are going to present our case to the parents we found this information out and now we've got to fix it with what money right because if you come back and say now you need to replace you know 500 fixtures in your district how many school instructors is that you know how are we going to pay for it it's not not necessarily easy to find in the budget you know feel that we try hard to keep the budget reasonable do you keep track of paint and dust lead paint yeah dust or anything in the soil or anything like that currently don't have any soil we were you know the state came through on a pilot project to do you know PFOs soil testing and we had a school in that pilot but we haven't been required to do any of that kind of how common are the water bottle filling stations in your school just we're hearing that those have a filter on the end and that they're in some cases are lead free in terms of the pictures and stuff so I'm just kind of wondering I guess my angle on this is we did hear from um Professor Costanza Robertson the testing in your district that you know some low cost options in some cases was to actually remove certain faucets if they're just more than are necessary it's all curious you know how many of those you have well I can tell you like in our high school we have uh kind of 10 drinking fountains accessible in the hallway uh that we and we changed them all we had a couple that were in a locker room or in a fitness room that we disabled and disconnected um they were they can go to one out in the hallway that's close by and it saved us the cost depending on those locations I don't think there's a standard or there is a requirement of how many you have to have with numbers yeah based on occupancy and you have to have you have to have one located in the cafeteria your sense of what that is I don't remember the number I mean we have more than enough and we have a lot of the bottle filling stations they're very popular and they get exercised a lot too in school I wouldn't know but we we really do strive to work towards getting the old ones out and replace them with the filtered ones with the filling stations everybody's got water on them and however the filtered ones are carbon activated filter which doesn't remove lead but they are filtration is a big that's another issue that a filter is not a filter so to speak they don't remove lead as well so lead is generally only removed by certain filters and I'm not a scientist but if you look at like a reverse osmosis water filtration that will remove most of the lead but a carbon filter won't water softeners do remove some carbon filters I believe do remove some but they're not going to remove it all and that would filters won't really be any kind of answer in my opinion most of that and I think it's about a water fountain per 25,000 square feet ish and you just you know the filters in question for these filling stations are $80 a piece so it does cost us in our operating budget a fair amount of money every year to change filters and if you're in high school or middle school that's got a decent amount of students in it you'll go through faster than we think we need to be changed and it's shocking how fast that little red light blinks and it's also they're very much aware of the red light blinking and they will let you know it's like a change filter yeah that's true we do get calls and we had 44,000 water bottles basically filled in our school at the and Virginia at the high school in one year how many 44,000 yeah we added up the all the displays counters and so and you know it's kind of a rough destination we were and that's originally why we started changing to find is to get rid of plastic bottles and that is why they count them is to say okay we just saved 45,000 plastic bottles kind of the idea of the whole counter you sir believe we should be testing every building in the state is that right I think if we're going to get a good measuring stick of where we're at we should be testing where we eat um the I heard someone say something about the dirt and the paint and all of that wherever the causes have led to children ours kind of where I think and it starts at home but yes every single building even if you just did one single test where it comes into a building I think it is or from that lead piping you'd have a pretty good idea of where the lead might be throughout the whole state how much time and money is accurate well I mean that could be a self test too one bottle versus two um you know I don't believe our municipalities are required to take a flush sample when they do their lead testing that's that's one sample from the same houses that they wanted tested in 1986 so municipalities take a 90 percentile approach to testing a community they say okay this they'll take one sample from these particular addresses they've been doing that in Virginia's paint and water for several decades to get their lead levels that they go by every three years that's like pulling the same fire alarm every test not going around all of them but no you can't do that so this ultimately but it might it might as much to do that as it would as to open the can of worms of having to replace every single ultimately what I mean to ask test hot water and and test every building can possibly think of that people are going to be in there consuming water hot water is in in kitchen is the first thing that comes to mind to me that we're not addressing that we're cooking our food in and if you read some of the causes of lead a lot of it comes from cooking and eating in our food and not as much from water so hot water in the kitchen makes sense to me that's fine and that's easy enough it's a small area to you're going to change the faucet you're going to change the high and the cold anyway then you're just worried about the piping going to it definitely it would be great to be able to give a test kit to every home in the month and say give us a first draw of concern and if you know homes are really contributing that much I have no idea children are tested at age one or two children are tested for that it seems to me if the levels were alarming they probably would be advocating for testing in homes to find out what the source is probably would be the homes not the school I'm guessing but we don't know there's a lot of places in the month that are probably in some of our areas I think that our school district hits the per child cap and it's because we have been thinking ahead of most of this stuff for many many years and trying to to upgrade our infrastructure there's probably a lot of older schools that are in much worse shape that could benefit from the money similar to how when we're consolidating we're sharing I would assume that this would be the same type of type of thing not to take money away from us but I think there's probably buildings in the rest of the state that could use more help than us in some cases I did 40 pictures in our district and it came up with negative on every single one we had less than .03 parts per billion and only like three fixtures out of 40 and those were kitchen and fountains those were the only ones I did were kitchen and fountains and I did them in September I would say that I've been targeting areas where people drinks and water fountains and places where we cook at kitchens and we've actually asked principals to not have students and staff drink from classroom sinks or bathrooms just a precautionary to try and do this you know it's staged kind of progression so it's a little more achievable and I actually called my food service lady who's testifying here today and she does a lot of schools she does the north, adison northeast and adison northwest which is Mount Abraham to Virginia area and I asked her about who puts hot water in to cook and she said Ken, I've never thought of it that's amazing I've never thought of it but I'm going to tell them it's time to start using cold water and I called her supervisor at one school and she said yep, hot water takes less time to boil I was better than a pressure and so I only needed to do that I was like okay see you later thanks and that kind of concerns me because my child goes there and eats the pasta and I'm thinking that could be where he gets more of it than anything because I know we send him with a water bottle and he doesn't drink too many of those in a day so I'm just and we did remove all the fountains in our elementary schools in the classrooms we removed them in September after I did the testing just because that's a precaution I'm guessing that if you did the study you're going to find a lot more cheap faucets that are in these daycare centers where they quickly put together a bathroom and put the cheapest fixture in there they could possibly find and those are probably where you're going to get some pretty heavy hits which would worry me more they are they are required to be tested now and the level is at 15 so we don't come we don't have the 300s so at the moment the way it's current bill is written we haven't marked it up at all at this point we've just had it done at Versailles it's basically looking at testing everything if we were to instead just test you know in year one the first time of faucets we would recommend that it be the cooking any food prep areas any food prep and what else and drinking fountains and drenching fountains so if we just did food prep and drinking fountains that would hit the majority of the problem for year one food prep hot and cold you know maybe drinking fountains cooking and one faucet at the farthest end of each wing of similar type of faucets so you've got a snapshot of the ones in the classroom but not all of them it's just a tremendous amount of testing yeah I'm intrigued by the thing that once you flush one you've actually sort of flushed everything more down the line which is just going to keep getting weaker and weaker and more yeah other questions represent the people are you three familiar with the bill that we're talking about yes because we're trying to answer those generally there's four and a half categories of five categories and um Mike yeah go ahead I'm sorry I would say your timeline that I read in the bill does not we have not had time to budget for that so that and then you kind of cost well we don't have money to pay for that because we had not been able to budget for that and then just the sampling that's laid out in the bill I think is a pretty aggressive schedule difficult for schools to meet that and the testing I wonder can test that I have no idea what the lab can ask the rest it I think that for a school district would say 800 kids um for for 800 kids you're probably looking at around $3,000 to test 40 fixtures which may very well be the fountains and the kitchens that doesn't include the hot water so maybe add 50 and another $500 but based on to do for 800 kids that's what I would that's what I would say and that's just simple that's not addressing some of the other things like timeline of having it done in or if you do find a problem that's kind of where we're all like oh my gosh if you find a problem in 10 days you gotta tell the public now what are you gonna do where kids gonna say I'm not sending my kids to the school because of this and so that is we're sitting here the reason why we're sitting here is because we're gonna cause this outcry and and we won't have a we won't have a way to get out of it or pay for it but ultimately we all I'm sure in this room don't want lead in our water or anything for that matter no question about it we want zero and or something in place to change the culture that we have and the and the the infrastructure that we're doing I think our goal is no lead no lead it's a matter of how we get there what's the best way to get there no lead I'd like to be carbon neutral yeah that's some type of some type of investment grade audit and for lack of better terms that's what I would think because there's so many different cases and scenarios and not everyone's on the same same page there not all in the same we don't all have the same circumstances no question Michael O'Grady O'Grady from Legislative Council made a suggestion I don't know want to say suggestion but he said contracting could be a possibility some out of state group is that possible it would likely have to be an out of state group when I've got many contractors in state I think we'd be looking at someone from out of state and I would assume that the inherent inefficiencies of that would absorb most of the money that would be allocated yeah you could solve most problems with time and money there are no if it were an out of state contractor would they have to be supervised by a Vermont they would have to be licensed in Vermont licensed in Vermont well they on a school grounds they'd have to be supervised essentially for safety security yes security I can't think of any other background checks we would require or you'd have to have one of your people accompanies that which you might as well just do yourself right which still takes that person out of the equation for you moving snow no they're not they're not and I think that's another concern all of us have I've only been doing this for a year and a half and the one thing that strikes me the most is that I have no staff and when I had a business I couldn't get people skilled to do the work and now I've realized that I don't have the staff to do the work out there it's an interesting kind of you need to talk to some of the students and get them into that profession I understand there's a bill that is in the house right now to get technical education in fifth grade and up there couldn't be a smarter thing happening in this state of the house than the house there's a pilot going on right now for anything between five and grade would be just absolutely amazing perfect Bruce and I have been talking about a mentoring program for facilities directors because we find the people from the trades come in do the job get completely overwhelmed by all the different things that come at them and they go back to the trades because it's easier to concentrate on one thing it's a brilliant idea you could get us the spending that you went through that would be really helpful can you get it to us in about five minutes maybe 20 minutes yeah alright as soon as you could get it I greatly appreciate it I will hunt you down and you also well you and you did you have a sense of your anything that you can give us on your remediation and the cost of remediation and if you could break it down so you could kind of see the pieces would be quite a bit helpful our poor fiscal office who said okay just come figure this out it's hard to do that right well I would say that if whatever decision is made schools you know we work on such a fixed budget that if you say there's cost sharing I would ask you to cap whatever the schools cost sharing is at whatever is in the document otherwise I'm afraid things will just mushroom we're well aware of unfunded mandates when we're dealing with lead in water it gets really tricky yes is there anything that you would like us to ask at this point where are we going to get the money yeah right on the okay we're already tested for that in the air I'd like the water I make sure I appreciate it I'll share with everyone okay it's all been all okay I've got my little notes and particles I guess Jack Francis Super Tennis Association I'd simply wanted to remind the committee that you have in front of you experienced school facilities managers and not every and Vermont has one. So when you think about the answers that you're getting and their ability to respond to questions based on their use of experience and what they know of the profession, one feature in Vermont is that not every school system has somebody with this level of credential. So I think that whatever bill you pass, these folks will be relatively well-equipped to contend with it, especially if you give them what they need. But there will be places that don't have a person like this, who even when you give them what they need, will be challenged to respond because they don't have somebody who's doing the job that these gentlemen do. We did have these folks in last week, so we're well aware that not everybody is like this. Just checking to see if there's, Beth, did you, I'm gonna give you an opportunity to ask a question. Well, I wanna ask a question. I've had the fortune to talk to a few of these gentlemen here. Just for the record, Beth. Beth Novotny for the Josef Learning Center. What I will say sort of echoes what Jeff just offered the committee. You've just heard from the public school facilitators and the independent schools, I remind you, are different. They don't own their buildings. They lease their buildings. The ability to rip out fixtures or change fixtures depends often on landlord approval to do this, pursue it to the terms of the contract or lease. Our school does not have a cafeteria service because we serve students with neurological differences. They come with their own prepackage food for a very specific reason. So there isn't a cafeteria worker cooking up meals for the students. So every school will be a little bit different and therefore the cost's different. And I said, as I said, what's unique about our building is there's a whole third floor with former convent rooms that have in-suite bathrooms with faucets that we don't think we need to test because staff and students don't access that entire area. And so you're going to have to, I hope, consider that it's not a one-size-fits-all as we move forward. And I said that I'd bring the committee some language. I hope to do that. That provides you the ability to sort of balance the competing interests a little bit. But keep in mind not every school is a public school that where you can put to the taxpayers a budget that can be approved. We don't have that flexibility in our world to simply raise rates for some hour or other, so more widgets. It just doesn't work that way. There's not a taxpayer-proofed budget. So if we did do some limiting as to what the fixtures that were tested, food prep ones, the water fountains, would that... I think that's a good starting point. Yeah, and I think it's probably somewhere in the neighborhood of about $2,000 per fixture. You think it's $2,000 per fixture? I would soundly say that, given the cost of that. Even a water fountain, because like you mentioned, the water fountain's $1,200. That's if you buy a wholesale. So you, so we've got little fixtures. We have labs, so food service fixtures, and water fountains, 2,000 hand sakes. And that doesn't count the lead testing or the labor to test it. That's simply just a replacement of it. I would say 1,000 for lavatory hand washing because most people use the hands-free, which are $600, $700, probably $800 to do so. Anything you can do to make that a little bit more fit for things like this, or to direct it to the person who can answer that extension. Here are the kinds of fixtures we'd be looking at. Here's what the cost would be, would you help us? Yeah, is there, can I send it to you electronically? Is there a way that I can address? I can send it to you. Shannon, yeah. Shannon, we'll get out of here. So the bottle-filling are $1,000 just for the fixture? Yeah, they're more than that actually. The wholesale cost is around $1,300. But wouldn't that, wouldn't it make more sense just to install those, maybe, as opposed to just replacing them? My supplier, Dan, that will sell you the lead-free, okay? He said to use the figure of about $1,000, and then you've gotta install it. And I'm guessing $600 for a plumber for these schools, I can't. If there's no major redo of heights of drains and so on, I mean, that number's easy enough to check out. Which most of them are, because we just replaced two and had to reconfigure the plumbing from an old style to a new style, which is $1,000 flat out per change out, for labor and minor plumbing parts. I was looking at, if it's your local plumber or if it's Ramon Mechanical or something like that, the number's gonna get bigger. They've got more overhead and they charge a lot more money to come in. Anybody else who has any questions? Yeah, do you guys have any opinion on the action level? Well, my personal feeling is that I think if the ball of water is held to five parts per billion by the FDA, that it doesn't make much sense to go below that. This is my personal feeling. That makes sense to us. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is a very important issue. We're very concerned about children and that's why we do what we do. Yeah, that's right. Thank you for your work. We're gonna get started because I know people have things to do here. So thank you, Michael D'Rosha. Can you introduce yourself to the record and tell us who you represent? Yeah, for the record, I'm Michael D'Rosha I'm the Executive Director for the Division of Fire Safety. So we regulate 12 to 14 trade professions, including plumbing. So it was interesting listening to all the conversation here. I actually learned quite a bit here, listening to all the... That's how I learned. You know, it kind of reads like it's straightforward in a set spot after listening to everybody's testimony. It seems like quite a challenge. If you want, I can kind of give you a summary of some thoughts I have. Yes. We're really just concerned about where a plumber needs to be involved, where they legally need to be involved and where not. I think you'll find a high percentage of the schools probably certainly aren't at this level of the three-hour testifying here because we do inspections of schools and so on. So our typical policy has been if you're exchanging a similar type faucet, for example, there's going to be no work notice required. So replacing a faucet with a similar type faucet, there's no work notice, there's nothing needed. From our perspective, that would be considered maintenance. Replacing a drinking fountain, you get in more of a gray area. If it's a similar type drinking fountain, it's going in at the same height and you're not having to extend the water piping and all this, then there would be no work notice required on the exchange of a similar type drinking fountain. So the key here is where does the Department of Public Safety, Division of Fire Safety draw the line on maintenance versus through statute the art of plumbing. And typically, if you're getting in to bring in an old plumbing system up to cold, then you would need to have a license master plumber file or work notice. And as these gentlemen stated here, the permit fees for plumbing are minimal. And so when you add all, I can actually send over here our fee schedule. But it's not a significant factor, the permit fee itself. I'm not a toxicologist. It's the conversation here has been interesting. So, you know, there's a lot of times where our plumbing inspectors receive calls. So if a school is having a particular situation or they're exploring something for remediation, I would encourage them to call our plumbing inspector. They will go to the site and they can offer technical assistance to that particular school. And so right now we have three plumbing inspectors. TJ Garrow is the chief plumbing inspector. He's also the district manager out in Rutland. And he chairs the plumbing board. We have Anne Ross. She works up in the Chittenden County area. And we have John Hammer, who works the northeast, southeast portion of the state. And we have a fourth plumbing inspector that will be brought on before July 1st. He seemed to indicate that they don't feel that there's an oversight. Well, I will say this. Typically speaking, we do roughly 2,000 plumbing inspections a year, roughly. And if we bring on another full-time employee down in the Springfield district, we'll jump that up to close to 3,000. Under statute, we have inspection priorities. And for example, licensed facilities are a priority. Places where people eat are a priority. So if schools are just changing out faucets and there's no work notice required, there'd be nothing triggering us to go there. When schools do major upgrades or renovations or alterations, we certainly do plumbing inspections on all those projects. So we've inspected hundreds of schools, you know, over the years as a result of construction projects and permits. Just so I'm clear. For example, just changing out a water fountain for a water fountain and our facilities guide can do it. Then there's no notice required and no inspection. But if I'm going to change a water fountain and it's going to be a bottle, water bottle filling station with, I think, some of that fountain is within, is there a need for notice even though I'm not doing exactly the same thing but it's in purpose roughly the same? There would probably be a notice required and the only reason I would say that is because most schools certainly are not going to engage in that type of retrofit. So they're going to hire a licensed master plumber and under the licensing rules as soon as that person is hired, he's got a file of work notice if he's doing the work. So there are licensing requirements for the plumbers. If I hire a licensed plumber, even if we're swapping exactly the same thing a fountain per fountain, I heard you say if you hire the plumber then you have to provide notice. For a swap out for a water filling fountain person? No, let's just say we're back to the water fountain for a water fountain. No, if they hire a licensed master plumber, they can do the work and we would not accept the work notice. So now if I'm in a position where I have to provide notice of the work, then once I've provided notice, once I've done something that requires notice, I'm going to have to have a licensed plumber and somewhere along the line, your shop has to do an inspection. If you're just replacing drinking fountains and stuff, the chances are our inspector is not going to go there. If it's part of a larger project in the facility, the inspector will go and look at it. But if it's just a single fixed year replacement or a couple, there's no way. We receive thousands of these plumbing work notices. And I'd be dishonest with you to say that. They're going to go out and inspect all of these. You start getting into replacing boilers. It's part of carbon monoxide prevention and that kind of stuff. They're going to go inspect a heating system replacement in a nursing home or something like that versus going to a school for a water fountain. So if it's a big project, then they're going to go look at it. If it's a new school, it's going to get inspected. If it's an addition onto a school, it's going to get inspected. If they receive a work notice and there's 20 water coolers out of being replaced and 30 faucets, and somebody decides they're going to file a work notice with us on a big project like that, they would probably stop buying inspected. So if we start this program in all of the schools, it looks like it will put probably some pressure on your department if we have schools around the state that are now seeking to do their plumbing. Are you going to be staff? No. The reason I say no is that the influx of an additional 500 plumbing work notices or something we're not going to be able to respond to by with extra staff. Representative Austin? Just like as a taxpayer and having the knowledge that you have wisdom, like what are your thoughts on this in terms of where we should go, what would be the most efficient but keep kids safe direction? I mean, again, I don't know what the problem actually is. We deal with risk every day and we do risk analysis every day as part of our work and the concept of trying to target high probability items would be the first place to start. So for example, if you have a school that was built in 2012 or a big addition that was built, I guess I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time with that. I mean, I guess I would look at where the cutoff dates are on where the new lead fixtures were, you know, the lead was prohibited. I think I'd go back to there and start targeting those high probability items. We target for say existing apartment buildings that are more than 25 years old. They're 50% more chance of having to fire in these buildings so we know what the risk is. So we spend our focus more energy on those types of areas here and I'm not sure, you know, obviously you've got water flowing through all these pipes. I learned this today, you know, all this stuff today. So I'm not... That's interesting. But what the problem is, to find out what the problem is, is scope of the problem. I mean, so much of our work is done without data to support what our problem is and I know it's a division with all the responsibilities when we try to align resources. A lot of times we struggle with, we've just got poor data and what are we throwing our resources at without having solid data? So I'm pretty much a data person where, you know, if we're having fire fatalities in ages of 50 or higher then we're going to focus our educational programs on people over 50. Not that anybody here is elderly. If you identified multiple fixtures that would require a notification, a work notification, is it possible to kind of say, all right, we've identified these, you know, we've got some work that's just going to be not rising to the level of requiring that, but other work that is, can you basically do one work notification that says we're doing these 12 units or et cetera or is it really one-to-one? So it can be on a job that... Yeah, I mean, right, we're pretty flexible, you know, as far as any paperwork or work notices being filed to us. I mean, we accept, like, phasing permits with businesses that, you know, if they want to do a certain amount now and tell us we're going to do this much next year, we work with people at all different levels. So I would also offer to the committee, if you want some expert testimony other than myself, we can make arrangements to get Gerald Garrell up here. He's the chief government inspector and he chairs the licensing board and he'd be more than happy to come up here and speak to you, but he's very knowledgeable about all the hard work. So you're very familiar with the industry. You know, this is clearly going to result... If we went through with the bill as written, it's clearly going to result in a need for a lot of license master plumbers to come in and do some work. Are there enough of them out there to...? We have approximately 2,000 license master plumbers, roughly 500 license journeyments. And the issue I see here, these are low-priority, high-cost jobs because what's going to happen is these plumbers are going to drive for an hour to get there to very little work. The profit margin is very low, so their prices are going to go up. And to try to pull them off a commercial job where their profit margin is much higher is going to be difficult. That's my own personal opinion, I think. If they're available to be pulled off. Right. I know I've called up license master plumbers and even friends of mine to do plumbing at my own house. My old friend. And it even takes three weeks or a month to get buddies to come over and do the plumbing work. I can see a real struggle with the license master plumbers. So if you're talking about... This is why I think it would be important to recognize that replacing a faucet would not require a work notice. And if you can get somebody that is able to do this, you're sitting good with this, monitoring wise. But, you know, probably 80% of your schools, and I'm just talking off the top of my head here, probably are far from this level of expertise in the schools. They just are. Representative Cooper? Have you a preference on an action level, if you think... No, I'd be not doing a disservice to you to get into action levels where I just don't know enough about it. But you did mention how you don't know... You're not certain of the extent of the problems. Would you say we should go ahead and test everywhere? Or what about testing? I don't know. I mean, look at all the new homes that have been built with lead-free fixtures and all this. I guess I wouldn't necessarily agree with a gentleman here that you go through every single home. But I mean, I guess I'd look at... If I'm doing risk analysis, if you've got a two-year-old that's been tested for lead and he's got high lead, then I guess at that point there's a key, let's go to this home and get this water tested. If you've got a four-year-old with high lead tests, then take a look at that person's health. I mean, you're being spoon-fed, that data, that is saying there's high lead here. So, you know, I'm not familiar with the testing principles up for lead in schools or just from what I learned here, to be honest with you. It's just not in my wheelhouse. The toxicology aspects of lead. You work on the pipes. I would just add one chair, just one more comment, and that would be if you started getting into a lot of wall destruction and stuff, we would like to be consulted on that. It's not saying we would require a building permit, but what it would do is we would send a fire marshal out to the site and you could be given permission on the spot to do this particular work. But I would just say, if you're going to start getting into demolition, taking down walls or putting a lot of penetrations only because there's a lot of firewall assemblies in our schools. Thank you. Is that a couplet? Relation to the fire marshal. Could a local fire chief be a part of that inspection process? We have a good question. We have 12 active municipal inspection agreements that we've given authority to the local municipalities to do the inspection. So to answer your question, yes. Those are listed on our webpage, but there are major cities where probably in the school systems you're going to find they probably have a pretty good maintenance program. Burlington, South Burlington, Montpelier, Brattleboro, Bennington, Hartford, and some others. I feel like I haven't helped you much after listening to all this conversation. No, this is great. Thank you. We're trying to deal with a complex situation. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. It's not straightforward, and that's usually what happens. If it comes to the legislature, it's usually not easy. But this is important. Thank you. And if you need G.J. to come in here, let me know and I'll have him come up here. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right. It's four o'clock. We have Michael O'Grady in the room. I think we're kind of at the point of just having a discussion about what we've just heard. So it might be worth your time to listen to us. I know you have other things that you'd like to do. Yeah, I am supposed to be in finance in like two minutes. Oh. I say go. You don't have to listen to me care to figure this out. Thank you very much. Have you guys heard from a friend here from the Department of Health? Right over there. He's right here. So did you have testimony already? We've had some testimony already. Are you willing to talk to us right now? I always willing to talk. Thank you. Let's listen, because I certainly have come up with a few ideas along the way. I deserve that, I'm sure. Yes, so thank you. And again, we're looking at, as we're moving forward, we're looking at trying to keep ourselves focused on the cost of the problem, how much it is and who pays for it. The timeline, who is included in what our action level is and who is included is becoming more interesting to me as well. So in terms of what we've heard, do you want to say something or should we start firing questions at you? Sure. I'll just say I'm David England, and this is your policy and legal advisor for health. I'm delighted to withstand your sense and arrows. Now, little arrows. Just sling. Questions to help us move forward. One of the things we just heard that was very interesting to me was, as we're looking at the amount of money that we have here, which we don't even have at this point, but moving forward and who's paying for things, one of the things that came forward that was very intriguing to me was the idea of not testing everything the way the bill is put, but focusing our testing first on the areas of greatest concern. They've talked about, and we can discuss that, the water fountains, the food prep areas, and the other thing that was interesting to me that I hadn't heard before is just the idea of, if you're getting up the flushed samples, that we really need to do it for everyone, when probably the whole system got flushed earlier. So I didn't express that very well. Yeah, Jacqueline, come have a question. Yes. Yes. Yes. So the one, two, and then the last one, the line test. So what's one? What's one? They talked about the one that sort of farthest down the line. Oh, so I think questions like that. I'm going to defer to somebody who knows things like that. I'm going to turn to Brian Redmond of DTC to see if he has respect. Because I actually don't on those specific questions. You want to just, can you join us, Brian? Thank you so much. Because of the dynamic duo here. For the record, Brian Redmond, director for drinking water and groundwater protection. You know, I really liked the opportunity to go back to my team to understand their thoughts on that. There's no doubt about it that as you're moving water through the entire system. So to a degree, the system itself is getting flushed as you're moving through the sample protocol. The piece that I want to check with is that you're getting some column of water that's not disturbed in the fixture itself. So that first draw is still, I believe, going to be valid, but I'd like to check that to confirm. And the thought of, and maybe this goes back to you, what if we limited, for the first year, we're just looking at the areas of greatest concern. This is my interest. I don't know where the committee stands on this, but I'm just asking that in terms of how that might affect costs. Well, I mean, it's actually that. If you limit the number of tasks that are going to be tested, you're going to drive down the cost of testing as well as remediation. The question is, how do you, then I guess, if we said we're only going to do X number, a more defined universe than the committee is currently confident about, how do you do stage two in a way that's efficient? Because as we discussed, Madam Chair, the Department of Health is going to do this with testing by region. So we're going to go into a part of the model, a part of orange or possibly all of whatever it is, and we're going to do the testing for every entity, every high school, elementary school, and daycare. So I don't think we want to be in addition collectively saying we're going to do these tasks this year and then these tasks next year, because that'll be the economy of scale of doing it in this sort of geographically defined way. Do you need someone saying, I'm not sure if it was you or the agency that said you could do a sampling, like a scientific sampling of schools and come up with a number that would show the scope of the problem scientifically? I would say that's what the pilot was. The pilot tested every... The issue is you really have to test every fixture because different fixtures are going to have different... potentially have different... But in a small sample of schools, if you've tested every fixture... You still want to test every fixture that's going to be used for drinking or for preparation. In the sample, right? Not every school in the state, not every fixture in the state, but a scientific way of figuring out a sample that when you've got... If you've tested all the fixtures and all of those schools in the sample, you could extrapolate in terms of the scope of the problem. So I think that... Brian can correct me if I'm wrong. He's not as tested. When we tested all the... In the pilot test, one of the reasons we wanted to do the pilot was because we wanted to see what is the scope of the problem. And so we tested every... We allowed schools to determine... We said to schools, you test what are reasonably going to be used for drinking. We didn't come in and police that and say, there's a bathroom at the end of the hallway. We said, you go test what you think you should test. Because it's 900 caps and then you've seen the data from that. And in light of what we found, no, not least of which was the 27 tabs above 15 BBB, we do think that there is a problem. For the record, Ted Fisher from the Ramon Agency of Education, I do not want to speak for my colleagues at the Agency of Natural Resources, but in answer to the representative Austin to your question, I don't know if this was said exactly in the Secretary's testimony, there was a conversation at one point about talking not actually about doing a representative sample, but of doing... If we do the testing at a higher action level, you will have good data for all of the schools. And then you can... So we're not talking about doing a smaller subset of schools. We're still talking about the sampling all along, but then you would have an idea of how many... Where we fall and be able to look at low, look at a lower action level in the future and know what the cost would be of that. Just to clarify, so when you're saying you're going to go regionally around the state, I guess my impression of the program that your department was kind of envisioning was all the testing was done locally and I was thinking that districts would figure out how to do that testing on their own schedule and the role of the department would really be to set up the database and handle that data coming in. So tell me... So that is not the case. So what's going to happen? So what's going to happen is... So in S40, the department asked for this, we asked the authority to establish a schedule for just the reasons that the gentleman mentioned, which is we can't inundate the lab. And the tests are only good for six months. So we have the current bill, the Department of Health would have the authority to go to schools in certain regions and say that this is when you're going to test and now we're going to come in and train and give you all the information. It is not on schools' own... It is not on schools' own within the end of the year, but you can decide because, frankly, I would be concerned to everybody to decide that they were for the deadline. It's time to test. And we get 45,000 samples on the database. To be clear, the number is about 40,000, between 40,000 and 50,000. That's our estimate. 40,000 and 50,000 samples. Between 40,000 and 50,000 tests. Yeah. So if... And again, I mean, we could reduce that if we just went at this point with just the key areas of concern. I realize it's not giving everything. I realize that sometimes we get constricted there, there are BPA-free cups in the bathroom, not as likely. More likely you're getting it from the areas where it's obvious that you drink. Do you have a sense of what that could cut in terms of... How would it affect your time, your schedule if we limited it to that? I'd have to, like... I think we could try to figure it out what did that look like. Because we have all the data from every single pack that from the 900 we have, then we could probably estimate it and say, well, based on this size of school, it would mean instead of 50 packs, it might only be 20 packs, but that's when the number on the error. Except that when you did the pilot, you said in schools water sources that you would reasonably expect children to drink from. So really, you are talking about those areas of this concern. But some schools chose to do all the taps in the boys' bathroom, and all the taps in the girls' bathroom. I have a couple other bigger policy questions. Gentlemen, I think, from the Fire Safety Department, the better idea would be to gather data, assess risk, and target those areas that are of highest risk. If you have any comment on that, sort of philosophy as we approach this problem? Certainly in general, that's exactly the right way to approach hazards. And Brian can correct me if I'm wrong. My sense of things is that it is a tap-by-tap issue. So that's why you can't do a scientific sampling in extrapolate, because this banana is fine, but that banana is full of arsenic. Unless you test that banana, you don't know. And then you can't assume, because this one is that zero, and that has 50, that the average is 25, or that there's a 50% chance that the banana is going to have something. Is that... Yeah, I would add that banana. I would agree with you, analogy. I think that we saw enough in the pilot that our recommendation was to test statewide. Yeah. Well, obviously, then you have the data to then say... to then prioritize by risk, I think. If you could look at initial flush, if it goes from 12 to zero, that's not a high priority. Perhaps I would go, whatever. Okay, thank you. Question. This may be more for your boss, but if the Department of Health had two and a half million dollars, and we said, do whatever you want to help mitigate the risk of lead in children, where would you spend it? That's a great idea. It's a great... Oh, my phone... I forgot. Same on the back. The truth is that there's a whole host of places we've talked briefly about, but the source of lead poisoning in children is mostly from pre-semi-gate rental housing, where lead is still present and has been sequestered. It has an incredibly complex problem involving tens of thousands of apartments and hundreds of thousands of relaunchers potentially. The thing about S40 is it is a problem that we can solve. We continue to work on lead paint issues. In fact, I did got the numbers the other day. I can say that we are trending down. The numbers have actually dropped substantially over the past three years. We're hoping that trend continues. So we're trending down on what? I'm saying trending down on the number of children who are lead poisons. So three years ago, it was something on the order of 650 last year was 444, and this year I believe it's 406. And so we're hopeful that a variety of things that we're doing with the lead program as well as our safe homes for families are having an effect. And as you look at those kids, they're living in rental housing. So we are seeing kids in 378 rental housing. And the source of their poverty is lead paint. In fact, it's not only lead paint. It's typically lead paint in a window well. It's that specific. I did speak with a woman who has a child who had a high lead level. And one of her concerns at moving forward is that that child is not even allowed to drink bottled water because it has lead in it. It could have lead in it. Did you, because I just looked at the kind of summary report from the pilot project, and I don't know maybe we could get the details a little, I'll just ask you better. So did you find a correlation in the 3% of samples that were over the EPA limit? The 27 out of 900. Did those seem to be a certain kind of fixture more than another? And I guess what I'm driving at is just having looked a little more particularly through some of the Oregon data, because they really give you what it is. Slop sinks, bath sink spigots, boiler room spigots, showers. Again and again, school after school, those are the places with the 200s. The faucets that are over tend to be and again, not scientific, but just having looked through a certain number of these things, they tend to be more when they're over in the 15 to 20 range. So I'm just kind of wondering, I would be interested to know how many of those 27 that were high are in those categories of things that are clearly not used as much, only because time between usage seems to be have a linear or clear relationship to how high it's going to get. So did you go? So I actually don't know off the top of my head I don't know if Brian does. So we can get that for you. I'm just hoping that we're using, we want to use a scientific method, we also want to use common sense, right, to sort of drive at the problem as much as we can in that kind of category seems to be helpful. We could easily analyze the data, I think. We certainly did have some in that instance. You know, the very, some of the very city results come to mind. Very city has outstanding corrosion control practices, so their results for a large school generally look pretty good. But they had the chemistry rear of the sink which was very high, a couple hundred parts per billion, but that sink was never used. It was turned on for the sample. For the sample. So that column, that guy. Been in there for months. A long time. So we certainly had some of those, we could analyze them and give you an exact number. Thank you. I'm sure I'm asking things that you've already been, already talked about in here, but the 40 to 50,000 tests you talked about, that was that's all of the statewide, all of the sources that you think you need to test. That is, that is all of the fixtures that could it's an estimate. Based on the pilot. Of all tests that could reasonably be presumed to be used for, could be used for drinking water and water. So that would not be testing the plumber's closet sink. Yes. I mean we would lead that to the schools. In the Department of Health's position, we would lead that to the schools of determination. If somebody asked me right or wrong, I would say I'm not your employer. I think I might say it very quietly. And did you have a cost per test per, do we know? So it's $20 Well it's $20 per test. And so you test it twice, that's 20. Yes. Would you stack it into the fiscal amount? Yes. So that's the Department Department of Health's lab that is doing it. So it's our fixed cost. And so, and so obviously we would test them afterwards too to be sure that you corrected it. So it's a $40 cost for testing. Okay. Just the 40 to 50,000 based on the pilot, pilot didn't include childcare centers, right? Right. So does that 40 to 50,000 still include childcare centers? So it does understand that that number is going to be probably fairly minimal. So it's 1100. So it's 1100. So the number of fixtures tested in the schools very I think it was 12 and 114 or something like that. So we just kind of say 50. So it's probably, you know, it's very rough. In the case of childcare centers, childcare, it's probably a small number of paths. So maybe it's, it might be one, it might be three, but in the end that means it's going to be 33,000, 33,000. And don't we have some kind of baseline data on all those childcare centers anyway? From the testing that they do for licensing? Yeah. So the oldest would be three years old, is it three or is it six for licensing? So three. Three years. So the data you already have on childcare centers already tells us ones that are above five in the last test. And I'm assuming none of them are over 15. But none of them would be over 15 at this point and have a license. Right. Yes, to be licensed and they have to be over 15. That's right. Did you have a question? No. I did. So David, as to scheduling, what would you do about unforeseen school closings, like a snow day for example? A snow day. Oh, I mean we just would come back to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean we're all dealing with human being, I mean we're sharing in beings. It's personal contact between, and that's why it's so much, this is why it's a big time. It's personal contact from somebody in our office having a conversation with somebody from facilities. It's not like, sorry, you missed it. Yes. I think it's interesting, I don't think I might got the picture that when you say regionally you're going into that area, you're teaching the people how to do the samples. Is that correct? Yes. We're going to teach folks how to learn how to do those samples. They're going to go through those samples. You're collecting them or they're bringing them to the... So we're going to give them the box with the peanuts and the beakers or we are going to go and get them. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to hand all the logistics of those. Okay, so it does make sense to see regionally. And just to go back to clarify my question again, I seem to be slow in learning this. It would, if we did focus it on the most problematic features for the first year would mean fewer taps and potentially more money for remediation later on. But are you saying that if they had to go back another year to finish up the rest of the fixtures that would be a problem? That would be extremely inefficient. It would be. Yes. Because we're taking a second trip and the other thing is that we're, as I mentioned before everything is, we're geared up. I sat in the operation center say Tuesday. You know we have 40 people in a room who are talking. We're going around the room talking about logistics and finances and all those pieces. So that's a significant resource cost both because we've got to pay all those people but also because they're taking their time away from something else. So once we're geared up we do want to keep moving. We could require we could require in an elementary school where kids don't necessarily read that they might be required to fix all of those things whereas in a school where there's probably more awareness of where to get water we can hold a different standard. Does that make any sense? Yes, although we're always seeking simplicity. Right. So I don't live off of you. Does that start to mean to be smart? I'm trying to save money. Yes. I mean I think we've had conversations about it not being it's not every single tap. It is the taps that are used for drinking taps are used for cooking and that if it's a sink that's not a good use of time resources. We could make a requirement something related to those areas that are likely to be consuming by children would be the areas that need to be considered. Yes. We could characterize the universe and focus the pictures that are used It seems like this is not a one-year process just based on everything we're hearing. I also don't So you've spun this lab with these 40 people up who have any anticipation of this legislation passing What's going to happen after a year? Are you prepared to have that facility up and running for five years? I'm just thinking what data set are these schools going to plug into for subsequent rounds of testing and who's going to manage it to make sure they don't send you all 45,000 samples on the same day because they're not just going to test one year. So this is a point that the chair and I spoke about which is that we think the Department of Health and DEC agrees that we also spoken with my colleague at AOE we think we can do everything in a year and a half. So what we'd be looking Department of Health DEC, the state would be looking for a deadline of December 31, 2020 Provided that we get that pass Sorry, what do you mean by done everything? I'm sorry, that we can do all the testing that the testing can be accomplished by the end of next year We can test all the schools and all of the and all the daycare, childcare But they start to do remediation don't we want to keep testing? So we don't need as big an infrastructure to do that and make it blanket to speak to what was needed in remediation part of the pilot Well the remediation wouldn't be within that 18 month time frame so we do all the initial sampling some facilities would be into remediation the requirement currently is to take that outlet out of service until it's been remediated and retested so it would happen outside of the time frame but they would not be able to be able to put that outlet back in service until it's remediated and retested and proofed and safe We have a plan for the schools you have someone that can do the testing what would be the plan for addressing the child care centers? So the Department of Health would work with BCI they'll put the licensing entry within BCI and they support this as a plan? Yeah, no questions I'm trying to find a way to get more money for remediation but I'm trying to find the money for that Reminded me of my question So from a public health triage point of view I understand your argument that you want to go into a region and test all the facilities whether they're public schools or track antennas but would it make sense to target child care centers with the younger children because of our understanding that that's the highest risk for children to let statewide target that population first of those facilities first and then go on to do the public schools after that I mean that's a perfectly bare statement than a policy decision that would be made by the General Assembly I'm not arguing against it but you do lose the economy of scale of being a regioner but yes that certainly has a public health catch on the standpoint that should make sense So back to the child care centers where you have data already over the last three years you've got everybody and you've got that not just by pass or fail you've got it by a number so we could say those that were over five you're going to target first and we don't have to go into all the testing right away until their next licensing that's another option yeah I mean the other thing I would say is that what we know from the testing is the reason it's a huge problem yeah but you'll know now you'll know now from the testing that's been done what their levels were right so Grammar Cades Child Care Center might be at 23 and could be this question about the child care center could be well couldn't be at 23 otherwise you'd lose your license one other reason 14 that could be at 14 so at that my place you don't have to retest but in this place you need to start you need to look at that one and say we need to get the remediation down we need to remediate so can I just be clear so we have that specific data not just that they passed that they were less than 14 but how much, what their level was yes yeah so that says we're only doing one we're only doing one tap because we have a grant so the Department of Health has a grant so we pay for the testing so that's a good question and the sample size that's being proposed is a $200 billion so different volume okay so this is new money that you have available to so it's money that we've been using for child care centers so you've been using money for child care centers you only have to go in and test one tap per place well we have the money to test for one place and that's what they've been doing okay that's federal money yes and you would be using that money to test all these child care centers again I'm having trouble with having to test again yes I'm having trouble with having to test again I realize that you didn't test all the taps I mean test all those things I do want to clarify maybe this is not a particularly helpful point don't make it briefly they're not compliant with Department of Health or regulations licensees are compliant with DCF regulations which require compliance to do with the water supply rule just so you know where we fit it we're simply finding money and doing the testing we're not we don't have a regular relationship with those licensees one of the more usual sort of culminating no this is so challenging just in terms of the goal and how you get there right down as I keep saying who's going to do all this work and how's it actually going to happen on the ground and what's it going to cost we're all over the place I'm going to Jeff Francis wanted to have some more I was trying to wait until the end okay thank you I'm sorry was it a bachelorette? but I've forgotten it I'll think a bit senior moment goes with the gray hair so I I'm from the superintendent's association I was not clear about the adoption of regional schedules either because the language in the bill is May so it says the department may adopt the schedule and now I'm confused about the testing program overall so is the intent that you will go site to site and train people or have people come to a training in advance of the way the schedule lays out the inches probably both that we will hold trainings and then immediately we will go and train people okay so I I'm really appreciative of the level of detail that you're delving into because I think good implementation is going to require that the program becomes more complicated if you've got facilities that are going to participate in training participate in sampling on somebody else's schedule like that's why you want to do it and that you have to do it but also one of the interests that the facilities managers didn't speak much about today was just the ability to get the sampling done particularly if the number of outlets that are going to be tested so I think that this is doable absolutely I'm not objecting to that I'm just I'm rolling over my head every logistical detail that's going to have to be contended with and it's one thing to gather 40 folks in a lab at the department of health it's another thing entirely to be dealing with personnel from 40, 50, 60 schools that are spread out across the region so I'm going to be interested before this is concluded in terms of how you define a region when you'll test personnel what the when you'll train personnel what the nature of the training is what the dissemination of the sample bottles is the collection method and so on and so forth because without discouraging folks there's going to be a dollar cost direct or indirect associated with every one of those samples so we did all that in the pilot we do have the experience of doing it and again these are human beings it's not that as it turns out we get in and this becomes impossible to come back to you and say boy this is actually a much bigger job it's going to take a little bit, we're still on the job we're still doing it night and day we're going to need a little more time and your pilot was both rural and urban yes I did remember well my major thing to me was until we test we won't know what we need so therefore we don't need to know how much money it's going to cost to remediate this so why not just get the testing done and see what's happening that makes the most sense get it done, get the testing done, get the results and then try to figure out where we're going to get all the money we're going to need well at least we'll know how much approximately I think the question becomes what happens when we get I know, we get all the testers well I'm sure we have money we'll summarize later, right? we're going to take all the testing I don't mean to be facetious but couldn't you make the youtube video on how to do the testing wouldn't you have as much accuracy as then that people could just sign off that they watch it or the district could watch it or the school could watch it at the same time I think we actually have done that that's getting a little bit too deeply in the way we're going to trust that most people are going to do it right, but I'm just thinking about the implementation that seems like that would save a lot of time so we've done those kinds of things we've made the video the truth matters that a lot of these things do become manual questions and that's something that at least working in this work for about a decade sometimes I don't think about oh we're doing something we're going to establish opioid the rules are prescribing the opioids for paying I've just filled out a lot of questions from doctors I didn't think about how much my college would be talking to physicians so all of these things they do have this sort of ancillary resource cost even if you do everything you still can it would be some level of resource that's going to do it what was that about it? do you remember how long the pilot project took to do? I don't remember if it was a good chance to do it sorry that they're dropping in in the middle of this the lab so I heard you say you need to set up a lab and staff so no we had a lab so I explained the committee what we have is what we call the health operations center which is an incident command center so all the folks who are touched by this work come in and meet and talk about logistics, finance law whatever might be needed so that's something that is put up in the cases of food for illness there's an outbreak of measles and so we decided because this is such an enormous job that we would implement that as a tool we would use this tool as a way to implement what we see coming and the staffing of that center operation center is done with folks from DOH that are there now so I guess I'm just trying to dive in does this represent a definable cost because you're not doing other work so yes absolutely so people are doing this work people are doing this work and not other work and they're going to be coding to this work and therefore we will need money to pay staff for that for the work that they're currently doing and will be doing and is that a known number right now so the fiscal note takes into account that work yes okay so what I think I'm hearing though from folks is that the sooner we can get started with this the better that's going to be and there's going to be a place where we are just going to have to make a decision and we are going to have we're just going to have to make a decision and then it's going to go to appropriations and they're going to have to make a decision about where that is so I know that there's still a lot of little questions that we have and some of those I'm asking these folks to help us figure out how we might be able to make sure some of those are being addressed but we're putting it in their hands either through rule or a report back and you were working on something I think is that correct something to help us with that it would be my goal that we get something out of this committee this week okay next week and you will be around you'll be around again because this is an important one for you I've brought a math or something we should get a better you know the fiscal note those folks are going to get back to us on the cost giving us a better idea of the cost which leaves us we need to work on the timeline the action level and who is going to be included in the meantime we'll be hearing from from Riva Murphy tomorrow department of children and families if you have information for us to show us we are looking to see if perhaps we can handle the childcare facilities in this committee so we can move it faster and we don't have to send it upstairs and have them go through the grueling process that we're going through we could get an idea if you have the list of childcare centers can show us we don't need the names of them if you need to redact that, that's fine but how many right now on the levels that you have now are above 15 above 10, above 5 I think we provided those for childcare we got for childcare is this the one that was the excel sheet that mixed up in our PDF yeah you have the whole cell worker and then you have the single page yes I think I said that's one, I think I said the PDF yeah it was a excel sheet go ahead one thing when we're trying to get an accurate fiscal note which is really proving a challenge is the original one we had talked about a year so we have employees at the Department of Health 125,000 for a year and now you're talking year and a half I still think it's ambitious we're ambitious department yeah optimistic that's nice that you're optimistic too I had some other really great thought but I have to run to school so there are a lot of subs oh by the way child care centers are licensed I want clarification if a licensed child care center is under the same regulation as a registered child care center or is that old language it doesn't exist anymore so there are two different home based and there are child care centers there are two different regulations both other DCF so read those who loves that I have the list that has schools so this is a my line to you Pam so you have the one PDF as an excel workbook that doesn't work as PDF but the other one major is how you're referring to I thought I sent you a PDF of the results of the child care yes I can pull it up and double check this is the right one does that work for you? are we not going to show the Canadians just like we're hiding? certainly there's no hiding here there's a secret okay that's a stocking I'm not sure that's the schools is this the original this is the PDF that doesn't work this one is really hard to figure out what it's telling us it's 132 pages long yeah and not suitable that's because we can't upload other than PDF and PDF or an excel where's the data in this though can we just get a little diagnosis is there something else? well it just looks like a list of schools I just can't tell what's in it I've been looking out for a while I've got two I've got one all reason but here's this here's this oh you've got it is there something else do you use this front? if I can find it it would come from I think this is the one that I have yeah that's that's the school but I had clients there this is the one that has this so it's still different than this you just want to spend really little bit after your research so I think I think what is doing research is not here it's going to take a long time but it's going to be worth it I'll tell you what which that's what do you have do you have it? that's it that's it I said I think Jeff said that you don't know I mean theoretically I can do it I mean so I'm going to go to witness you like that idea? what if I have a high level it's up we can and there's only a result the results are going to be the same but because she doesn't have a career we're trying to look at her she's not going to be a good population public and the public is having her and so I'm going to let her know what else there we are alright there we go you can erase that other thing I'm going to ask for the rest so erase the red erase the red erase the red erase the red don't worry we're going to get those answers big questions so you're talking about a fairly small universe fairly small universe if the number was 5 ppb it's affecting a small number of others well it's 14 plus 22 plus 7 correct excuse me it's 14 it's 19 and if it's a home base you're probably talking about a tab a tab and what about the childcare centers so I'm actually not managing the questions that's a home yeah I might have to ask her okay that's Coup's home Coup's childcare I don't have to ask okay she is is she on the schedule for tomorrow? tomorrow? so yeah would you mind checking with her David to get us that information Beth? Beth Navalny for the Mosaic Learning Center this is actually a question for the committee we know that depending upon where you draw lines depends upon what the cost may be but then there are unanticipated costs that micro she sort of touched upon when you ever engage in tinkering the building sometimes though you may think it starts out as being simple it becomes more complicated and you're often required to bring things up to code that have nothing to do with why you were originally back there behind the wall so the question I have is if this committee is committed to whatever language it has based upon the idea that there will be appropriate funding to schools to make the remediation what happens when the appropriations committee comes to a different conclusion and funds only a part of this but not all of this where does that leave those of us another day I want to just make sure that the questions that are before you folks now we obviously will be having more discussion tomorrow given we've just gotten a lot of information I see there's something else within the committee to our witnesses Elena is it something for the witnesses? no go ahead it's something for the committee okay I do have a question it's more of a background question I'm just looking at the digger article that came out when the pilot was released and it looked like at that time when the pilot was released that none of the agencies were recommending mandated lead testing in schools I don't have a particular recall of the article certainly we had to gather around and talk with everybody else who was involved before we could make a recommendation as we tried to figure out the universe I mean I realize we're not there anymore but I'm just trying to get a handle on how we got how we got here so as a result of the pilot there was not a recommendation there is a recommendation that came in the form of the governor's support and his announcement which was for mandated testing in every school I can't remember it shifted somewhere along the way we had this impression and we need to now think about what the inspiration is and how do we do this so it did take some months to put everybody's heads together and then come forward and the original one left everything at 15 as an action level that was the intent that was where the donors with no remediation with no remediation in that current the donors just attacked are we sufficiently full of information do you think committee that we can begin to start to close in on some of the questions that we have before in terms of our what we need to do to get this bill out of here and over and over what you think about that we will come back tomorrow I think we've got a pretty lovely floor again that right but we will be here in the morning which will make it really easier oh yes, Shannon also I have two announcements for the committee one is that Dylan representative Jim he still left you all a family that he asked me to hand out on the path to you so before you leave it's for non educational opportunities programs the other thing is that with Jeff Francis here the entire committee has been invited to a lunch meet and greet and general discussion with the VSA they're having a meeting on March 28 which is next Thursday from 11 to 1 so the first part would be 11 to 12 current campus is different now and lunch 12 to 1 your floor starts at 1 that day so we can get you back here in time Jeff do you want to add anything? no, thank you where is it? oh and it's at the Capo Plaza hotel so we're all going to take a field trip and walk over, I'll go with you and um that's it? I do not think that you'll be able to make this for the lunch please, please let Shannon know because they will be invited okay thank you thank you